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Renaming a Git Tag

Git does not have a rename command for tags. There is no git tag --move or git tag --rename. Tags are immutable references; once created, you cannot change the name of one without creating a new one and removing the old one.

That leaves developers in an awkward position when a tag carries the wrong name. You tagged v2.1.7 as release-2.1.7. The project switched from a release-X.Y.Z convention to vX.Y.Z. A typo slipped through before the push. Whatever the reason, the tag exists in both local and remote repositories, and it needs to be renamed.

The process takes four commands, and each one does a specific job.

Using dev_overrides for Local Terraform Provider Development

When you are building a Terraform provider, the default installation mechanism works against you. Every time you want to test a change, Terraform looks up the provider in a registry. That means you either publish a pre-release to the Terraform Registry on every iteration, configure a private local mirror, or wire up a complex network mirror configuration just to try out a two-line fix. None of those options belong in a tight edit-compile-test loop.

The dev_overrides block in the Terraform CLI configuration file solves this. It tells Terraform to skip the registry entirely for a named provider and load the binary from a local path instead. On macOS and Linux, this file is ~/.terraformrc. On Windows, it is %APPDATA%\terraform.rc.

Rebase. Squash. Merge. Repeat.

You open a pull request. The CI checks pass. A reviewer leaves a comment:

"Please squash your commits and rebase onto the latest main."

If you are new to contributing to open source or working on a team with a structured workflow, that request can feel like an obstacle between you and getting your work merged. It is not. It is a signal that the project cares about its history, and that caring about history is worth your time too.

This post covers the contributor side: what to do to a branch before opening a pull request (or merge request, as GitLab calls it), covering rebase, squash, and sign.

The maintainer side, covering the three GitHub merge strategies and why squash and merge is the right default, is covered in Squash and Merge: A Better Default.

A lot of what follows is inspired by Marc Gasch's Git rebase, squash...oh my!. This post builds on that foundation and connects these practices to the structured commit workflow covered in Conventional Commits: How to Write a Better Git Commit Message and the contributor expectations described in CONTRIBUTING.md: Writing Practical Contribution Guidelines for GitHub Repositories.

Squash and Merge: A Better Default

Every GitHub repository shows three options when a pull request is ready to be merged:

  1. Create a Merge Commit
  2. Squash and Merge
  3. Rebase and Merge

The default is usually Create a Merge Commit, which produces history that becomes harder to read and reason about over time. And most teams tend to leave this default as-is.

This post covers what each strategy does, why Squash and Merge is a better default, and how to configure GitHub to enforce it.

Signing Your Git Commits: From Zero to Verified

Anyone can commit code to a repository pretending to be you. Git's author fields (user.name and user.email) are free-form text that any client can set to anything. Cryptographic commit signing closes that gap by mathematically binding a commit to a key pair that only you control. Once you add a verified badge to your commits on GitHub or GitLab, every reviewer can be confident that the code actually came from you.

This post walks through the full picture: why signing matters, how to configure your git client correctly, how to generate and publish a GPG key, how to use your platform's no-reply address so you never expose your real email, and how to automate Signed-off-by trailers with git hooks, complete with copy-paste examples for every step.